Voting & Practical Politics

"It is assumed then that existing conditions and inequalities obtain from the operation of the laws of trade. Nothing could be further from the fact. They are the results of barbaric custom, of class domination and legislation, and are upheld by no natural law of trade or natural law of any kind yet discovered; and the wrongs of which the landless laborer so justly complains are wrongs inflicted and sustained by statutes regarding the tenure of land which have no basis in reason, and will be found to be as destitute of any foundation in the science of law as they are of any justification in the science of morals." - Joshua K. Ingalls

"If liberty has a weak-kneed friend who is
contemplating a violation of his anarchist principles by voting just for once,
may these golden words from John Morley's 'Compromise' recall him to his better
self: 'A principle, if it be sound, represents one of the larger expediencies.
To abandon that for the sake of some seeming expediency of the hour is to
sacrifice the greater good for the less on no more credible ground than that
the less is nearer." - Benjamin R. Tucker

"What is to be apprehended, and, if possible, avoided,
is the diversion of the minds of the workers themselves. They are liable to be
drawn into superficial movements for the adoption of specious remedies for
minor evils, and so be made the dupes of political aspirants. Political power
is sought mainly for personal or class aims, seldom from a desire to promote
the public good. Its attainment is at the expense of industry, and it is idle
to suppose that it will be wielded in the interest of labor. In any question as
between the worker and the holder of privilege, it is certain to throw itself
into the scale with the latter, for it is itself the source of privilege, the
creator of class rule. Accumulated in whatever hands, whether politician,
capitalist, or ex-workingman, it is certain to be employed to increase itself
at the expense of society." - Joshua K. Ingalls

"At its very best, an election is merely an attempt to
obtain the opinion of the majority upon a given subject, with the intention of
making the minority submit to that opinion. This is in itself a radical wrong.
The majority has no more right, under Equal Freedom, to compel the minority,
than has the minority to compel the majority. When a man votes he submits to
the whole business. By the act of casting his ballot, he shows that he wishes
to coerce the other side, if he is in the majority. He has, consequently, no
cause for complaint if he is coerced himself. He has submitted in advance to
the tribunal, he must not protest if the verdict is given against him. If every
individual is a sovereign, when he votes he abdicates. Since I deny the right
of the majority to interfere in my affairs, it would be absurd for me to vote
and thereby submit myself to the will of the majority." - Francis D. Tandy

“I do not deem it essential to indorse any particular plan
to effect the object, as I think it inexpedient to invoke legislation to do
anything but take itself out of the way of social progress . . . .” – Joshua King
Ingalls

"In fact, any method is justifiable in
our war against the invasive and aggressive State. The question is simply one
of policy and practical wisdom. . . . [I]n the matter of offering resistance to
and using force against the State, the thing to settle is what form of
resistance resists best, which is the most forcible of all kinds of force. And,
looking at the ballot from this point, nothing can be said in its favor. It is
the poorest, the most impotent, the most uncertain of weapons." - Victor
Yarros

“The importance of a branch of social science resting upon
so flimsy and kaleidoscopic a base as value when economically defined must be
seen when we reflect that the causes which give rise to the most extreme
fluctuations are not natural but wholly artificial, and are constantly being affected
by partial and class legislation and by crudely unjust social and civil
customs. We can conceive of the indignation the free trade economists would exhibit
should a ‘protectionist’ assert that the high prices under a prohibitory tariff
were nothing but the result of the natural laws of trade; but their assumption
that, under the commercial monopoly of the land or the ownership of the
laborer, we have an equitable or any natural system of exchange, is far more monstrous
and truth defying.” – Joshua King Ingalls

"Anarchism is as hostile to the ballot as peace is to
gunpowder." - Benjamin R. Tucker

"Now this is notably the error of labor and economic
reformers. They give an admirable diagnosis of the derangements of the body
politic, and trace them directly, at least, to the immediate cause. But usually
they become infatuated over some specific remedy. This often, if not always,
takes the form of some statutory provision or positive institution which they
feel certain would cure the disease. A prohibitory or restrictive law is the
dream of the reformer who seeks to make the world temperate." - Joshua K.
Ingalls

"I begin to be a little suspicious of [Herbert
Spencer]. It seems as if he had forgotten the teachings of his earlier
writings, and had become a champion of the capitalistic class. It will be
noticed that in these later articles, amid his multitudinous illustrations (of
which he is as prodigal as ever) of the evils of legislation, he in every
instance cites some law passed, ostensibly at least, to protect labor,
alleviate suffering, or promote the people’s welfare. He demonstrates beyond
dispute the lamentable failure in this direction. But never once does he call
attention to the far more deadly and deep-seated evils growing out of the
innumerable laws creating privilege and sustaining monopoly. . . . Poverty is
increased by the poor laws, says Mr. Spencer. Granted; but what about the rich
laws that caused and still cause the poverty to which the poor laws add? That
is by far the more important question; yet Mr. Spencer tries to blink it out of
sight." - Benjamin R. Tucker

"The philosophy of anarchism is not calculated to
enlist popular acclaim. . . . It is too practical for ready acceptance by the
unthinking. It holds out no promises. It deals with discernments only. The
unhampered individual in association with other unhampered individuals will
better assure the well-being of each than is possible by any scheme of
interference. This, we are told, is a dream that gets us nowhere. Nevertheless,
to the extent that we have made any headway at all, it has always been by the
lessening of interferences. Meanwhile the numbskull masses will continue to
rely on Sovereign powers to keep them decent, while Anarchism proceeds on the
hypothesis that unrestricted man is . . . rather friendly and neighborly . . .
." - Herman Kuehn

"We refer to this incident as typifying the astounding
blindness which darkens the senses of even the foremost reformers, with rare,
rare exceptions. The very swindle that alone makes the poverty and degradation
of labor possible is held up for adoration and glorification in the very house
of humanity's friends. It is this very ballot-box itself that only needs to be
rolled off the neck of labor in order to put it into the arena of a fair fight
with the oppressor. All these grievances of which the reformers complain were
born in the very principle of despotism which creates the ballot-box and
perpetuates it. The ballot-box itself, as an accepted assertion of the right of
a majority to rule a minority, is the very despot that must first be cast out
and buried. There is where the reformers still toddle in the very infancy of
true reform." - Benjamin R. Tucker

"Yet anarchy will not down, but continues to gain adherents, and says to the statesman: Your surface issues are dead and party questions misguided." - Dyer D. Lum

"It is, it seems to me, a waste of effort to appeal to
the plutocratic for relief from political and economic wrongs. And then, too,
they may not be so much to blame as their victims for the present dastardly
condition of things sociological." - Joseph A. Labadie

"Be it our part to disabuse at least the few thinkers
unbiased by personal ambitions, and show that the ballot, however available as
in the past, for salaried privilege and official power, is worthless as an
engine for expropriating land and other capitals of production now in the grip
of monopolists. . . . The plutocrat is most willing for agitators to amuse the
masses with this theoretical means of a power ever waved like the fruited
branch before the grasp of Tantalus, thus distracting them from revolutionary
acts by revolutionary ideas." - Marx Edgeworth Lazarus

"Is not the very beginning of privilege, monopoly and
industrial slavery this erecting of the ballot-box above the individual? Is not
the ballot-box unscientific, anti-social, and a simple transposition of the
equation of monarchy? . . . The oppressor housed in ballot-boxes is the same
deadly genius that lurks in the palaces. . . . [When the enemy is] disguised
and parked in the ballot-box . . . [the reformer] is thrown off his wits and
glorifies the very arch-devil who has deluded him by a change of base." -
Benjamin R. Tucker

"But I think the time for promoting any positive reform
of the land system through political ascendency, and by legislative
preponderance of an honest purpose to effect a public good, has long since
passed away . . . . For it is quite apparent now to clear-headed people that
the land question, and all other questions of human interest, will take care of
themselves, if governments will let them alone, withdraw their bailiffs,
tax-gatherers, detective police, and bandit, mercenary soldiery . . . ." -
Joshua K. Ingalls

"Give up, I beseech you, the search after the remedy
for the evils of government in more government. The road lies just the other
way,—toward individuality and freedom from all government. . . . It is
the inherent viciousness of the very institution of government itself, never
to be got rid of until our natural individuality of action and responsibility
is restored. Nature made individuals, not nations; and, while nations
exist at all, the liberties of the individual must perish." - Stephen
Pearl Andrews

"The spirit of Caesar, rendered powerless in religious
systems, castrated of divine right in forms of political government, is
entrenching itself in the economic system of the age. British and German
empires, Spanish and Italian kingdoms, French and American republics, are but
dead forms; the animating soul in each is the same. A common
(economic) feeling has made them all akin. Statecraft exists for the
furtherance of economic interests: forms of government are
recognized as of secondary importance to 'vested interests.'" - Dyer D.
Lum

"[A]ll human legislation is simply and always an
assumption of authority and dominion, where no right of authority or dominion
exists. It is, therefore, simply and always an intrusion, an absurdity, an
usurpation, and a crime." - Lysander Spooner

"But education is a slow process, and for this reason
we must hope that the day of readjustment may not come too quickly. Anarchists
who endeavor to hasten it by joining in the propaganda of State Socialism or
revolution make a sad mistake indeed. They help to so force the march of events
that the people will not have time to find out, by the study of their
experience, that their troubles have been due to the rejection of competition.
If this lesson shall not be learned in a season, the past will be repeated in
the future . . . ." - Benjamin R. Tucker

"Under a sublime delusion that class-made laws are
likely to right his wrongs, the workingman helps load up the gun by voting,
despite all experience that, when it is discharged, it is the worker, and not
the exploiter, who gets hurt. But he will go on voting just the same for the
same regime if not with the same political party." - Joshua K. Ingalls

"Every man who casts a ballot necessarily uses it in
offense against American liberty, it being the chief instrument of American
slavery." - Benjamin R. Tucker

"It is vain to hope for any improvement through
legislation; indeed, it is through legislation, and the superstitious deference
paid to legislation, that the trouble has arisen." - John Beverley
Robinson

"Civilism, thus far, has hardly done more than to refine and render more subtle the subjection of labor to lordly will. From conquests with bludgeons, swords and spears, as in the earlier ages, it has inaugurated a war of cunning and fraud, whose weapons are technical terms, shrewd devices, [and] class legislation . . . ." - Joshua K. Ingalls

"The majority of the people are not corrupt, but they
are too busy and too ignorant to estimate the worth of politicians and
officials. The majority of the people are obliged to work for a living and to
respect each other's rights. The politicians are made a privileged class and
given unlimited opportunity for fraud and tyranny; no wonder they become
debased. Not every man is a tyrant; but there are few men who, if made absolute
rulers of men, would not soon learn to play the tyrant and to like power. The
majority of the people are not corrupt. Give them equal liberty and
opportunity, and they will prosper. At the present they live under a system as iniquitous
as it is irrational; and things are in a pretty bad state. But they will sooner
or later open their eyes and turn over a new leaf. They will declare popular
government a failure and resolve to try freedom." - Victor Yarros

"Political methods must be condemned without even these
qualifications. The ballot is only a bullet in another form." - Francis D.
Tandy

"Our political savants offer us nothing but what is
most delusive and contradictory, while servilely bowing to the demands of a
dominant plutocracy." - Joshua K. Ingalls

"You assume that the right of arbitrary dominion—that is, the right of making laws of their own device, and compelling obedience to them—is a 'trust' that has been delegated to those who now exercise that power. You call it 'the trust of public power.'

"But, Sir, you are mistaken in supposing that any such power has ever been delegated, or ever can be delegated, by any body, to any body.

"Any such delegation of power is naturally impossible, for these reasons, viz:—

"1. No man can delegate, or give to another, any right of arbitrary dominion over himself; for that would be giving himself away as a slave. And this no one can do. Any contract to do so is necessarily an absurd one, and has no validity. To call such a contract a 'Constitution,' or by any other high-sounding name, does not alter its character as an absurd and void contract.

"2. No man can delegate or give to another, any right of arbitrary dominion over a third person; for that would imply a right of arbitrary dominion over a third person; for that would imply a right in the first person, not only to make the third person his slave, but also a right to dispose of him as a slave to still other persons. Any contract to do this is necessarily a criminal one, and therefore invalid. To call such contract a 'Constitution' does not at all lessen its criminality, or add to its validity.

"These facts, that no man can delegate, or give away, his own natural right to liberty, nor any other man's natural right to liberty, prove that he can delegate no right of arbitrary dominion whatever—or what is the same thing, no legislative power whatever—over himself or any body else, to any man, or body of men." - Lysander Spooner

"Through every form of barbarism, feudalism, and civilism, industry has been mostly enslaved—much of the time in a gross material form; always through force, fraud, and fictions of law and positive class-legislation." - Joshua K. Ingalls

"[W]e ask no privilege, we propose no restriction; nor, on the other hand, will we permit it. We have no new shackles to propose, we seek emancipation from shackles. We ask no legislative sanction, for co-operation asks only for a free field and no favors; neither will we permit their interference." - Dyer D. Lum

“[S]o infatuated are men with the idea of reforming things
by legislation, and so superstitious are they in their respect for anything ‘enacted
into law,’ that they give no thought to the study of nature’s laws, and have no
respect for her silent, yet constant, intimations.” – Joshua King Ingalls